Symphony Review: Gemma New returns for a celebratory Beethoven Ninth

Gemma New. Photo by Chris Christodoulou

Guest conductor Gemma New, in comments preceding her appearance with St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) last Saturday (March 1), said that the concert would be about “celebrating our Earth and our life upon it.” Certainly the work that opened the evening, the local premiere of “Hymn to the Sun” by St. Louis’s own Kevin Puts (b. 1972), was quite a party.

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.]

Commissioned by the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in 2008, “Hymn to the Sun” is described by Puts as “a wild, sacred dance to call forth the sun and all its powers, and then the sudden and magnificent rising on the horizon.” It absolutely was that on Saturday night, with terrifically demanding writing for the percussion section (especially the marimbas, xylophone, and piano) and elaborate passages for the flutes. The mood abruptly shifted to a powerful chorale for the strings—the hymn of the title—before returning to the sense of wild revelry that opened the work.

Props to percussionists Will James, Alan Stewart, Kevin Ritenauer, and Charles Renneker; pianist Peter Henderson; and the members of the flute section: Jennifer Nitchman, Jennifer Gartely, and Ann Choomack (doubling on piccolo). New led her forces through this elaborate web with that perfect mix of what my fellow critic Gary Liam Scott described as “poise and control” a few years ago.

The mood turned reverential with the next work (also a St. Louis premiere) the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, by J.S. Bach (1685–1750) in a 1921 orchestration by Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934). Elgar employs the full resources of the post-Wagner orchestra (around 80 players) with spectacular results, especially in the final moments of the fugue.

Elgar doesn’t unleash the full power of that big band for the first time until nearly the end of the fantasia, which begins with the main theme played by the oboes and clarinets—done with great feeling Saturday by Phil Ross and Xiomara Mass (oboes) along with Abby Raymond and Thomas Frey (clarinets). Shannon Wood on tympani and (I think) Will James on bass drum provided the ominous processional tread that Elgar added to Bach’s original. The composer doesn’t pull out all the stops again, so to speak, until the final pages of the fugue, when the horns and bras sections really come to the forefront. They sounded terrific Saturday night, especially Thomas Jöstlein’s horns in those exposed trills.

New possesses a singular combination of artistic sensitivity and fine craftsmanship, especially when it comes to revealing sonic details. I could, for example, hear that in the way she kept the threads of the fugue clearly delineated while losing none of the raw power of the composer’s orchestration. This was a classic case of the iron fist in the velvet glove, a fine mix of finesse and force.

The same was true of her take on the evening’s Big Event, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (Choral) by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Ideally, the Ninth ought to open with a mix of otherworldly mystery and tension, like the components of a nebula spiraling together to form a star, moving from pianissimo violins over a horn pedal point to a fortissimo statement of the first theme by the full orchestra. With the right pacing and instrumental balance, that first movement (Allegro ma non troppo e un poco maestoso—“not too fast and somewhat majestically”) should grab one by the throat.

The SLSO did all that and more under New’s direction. She  is, as I have written previously, an engrossingly theatrical conductor who engages on a very physical level with the score. Her big, sweeping gestures are a kind of 3-D metaphor for the music, bringing an added visual dimension to an already persuasive performance.

The first movement was rich in orchestral detail and forward momentum. The Molto vivace—Presto second movement featured some delightfully precise playing by the horns and woodwinds. The Adagio third had a balletic flow and heightened the contrast with what went before. And then there was the famous choral finale.

In looking over my notes from Saturday night, I find that my handwriting (which is never all the clear, even to me) deteriorated to chicken scratches as I tried to keep up with all the great things happening on stage. The vocal quartet was quite impressive, particularly bass-baritone Nathan Berg, who sang from memory and was deeply connected to the lyrics. 

Tenor Jamez McCorkle was a bit more dependent on his score but nevertheless turned in a fine performance in the alla Marcia solo. The decision to put the marching band in its own space stage right worked very well here, allowing the audience to hear both it and soloist quite clearly.

Soprano Susanna Phillips and mezzo Sasha Cooke, both familiar faces locally, rounded out the quartet in fine style, their powerful voices blending perfectly.

Under Erin Freeman’s direction, the SLSO Chorus were in top form. Their enunciation was crisp and their vocal lines clear, even during the complex contrapuntal moments in the choral finale. Beethoven, as New remarked back at the top of the evening, was a great admirer of Bach—a fact that is abundantly clear in Ninth. Indeed, in the hands of some conductors (the late Wilhelm Furtwängler comes to mind) Beethoven’s writing can be a bit of a strain for the singers. Happily, New and Freeman appear to have a better grasp of what works best for choristers.

So, yes, another immensely satisfying Beethoven Ninth from the SLSO. The last time they did it (February 2020) with Stéphane Denève at the podium, I praised their performance as “the Ninth against which all others must now be measured.” This one, I’m pleased to report, measured up quite well.

Next from the SLSO: Jason Seber conducts the orchestra in David Arnold’s score for the 2006 film version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale as the movie unspools on the big screen overhead at the Stifel Theatre. Performances are Saturday at 7:00 pm and Sunday at 2:00 pm, March 8 and 9.

Symphony Review: Doing right by D

Lately, circumstances have conspired to delay the composition of these reviews. The downside of that is that anything I didn’t make a note of at the concert has gone down the old memory hole. The upside is that it gives me time to reflect on what I saw and heard. Sometimes temporal distance lends enchantment, sometimes not.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts last Saturday and Sunday (January 25 and 26) definitely went up on the enchantment scale. There were only two works on the program: the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), paired with another uncompromising essay in D major, the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911).

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.]

Stéphane Denève conducts
Photo by Virginia Harold

Both works left audiences and many critics a bit nonplussed at their premieres. Both were widely regarded as too long, too complex, and just too darned non-traditional. Both have since been redeemed by history.

One big complaint about Beethoven’s concerto back in 1806 was that its first movement, which clocks in at around 25 minutes, was longer than most concertos in their entirety. Audiences found the expanded symphonic structure difficult to follow, and in all fairness, Beethoven did push the recognized boundaries of the form to their limits. Until his past weekend, I often felt the same way.

Stéphane Denève and soloist James Ehnes made me see the piece differently this time around. I found myself completely captivated, and not just by that first movement. The entire concerto unfolded in a panoply of drama, romance, and in the Rondo (Allegro) finale, bumptious fun. Ehnes completely nailed the daunting octaves of the violin’s entrance and displayed a wide dynamic and emotional range throughout the work. 

Beethoven left room for two cadenzas in the concerto, with the result that the soloist has a plethora of choices, including (as Anthony Marwood did here in 2019) improvising his own. Ehnes chose cadenzas by the great violinist/composer Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962), and while they’re clearly products of a later era, they nevertheless effectively complement the concerto’s early 19th century esthetics. Ehnes played them and the rest of the concerto with the mix of flash and finesse I have seen him display in previous appearances with the SLSO. 

He cuts a more conservative figure on stage than some violin virtuosi, but there was plenty of passion and joy in his actual performance. The audience apparently agreed. Ehnes responded to their ovation with a quiet contrast to the finale of the concerto: the third movement (Largo) from the Violin Sonata No. 3, BWV 1005, by Bach.

Violinist James Ehnes
Photo by B Ealovega

Equally impressive was Denève’s interpretation of the work overall. This was a performance with a strong sense of momentum, beautifully shaped and with lucidity that gave me the sense of hearing and “seeing” Beethoven’s architecture more clearly than I had in the past.

He brought that same sense of clarity to his reading of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Like Beethoven’s concerto, Mahler’s symphony—originally billed as a five-movement “symphonic poem”—was poorly received at its 1889 premiere with Mahler himself conducting the Budapest Philharmonic. 

Multiple revisions followed. The final four-movement version, now labeled as the Symphony No. 1, was premiered in Berlin in 1896. That’s the version commonly performed today and the one we heard last weekend.

And a wonderful performance it was, too. The mysterious opening, emerging (miraculously) from near-complete silence, commanded attention from the start and made the statement of the main theme (adapted from Mahler’s song “Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld”) that much more effective. The second movement was cheerfully bucolic, the mood aided by the way the low strings leaned into the first beat of their accompaniment of the Austrian ländler melody.

The third movement funeral march, with its fugal treatment of a minor-key version of a tune better known as “Frère Jacques,” dripped with that mix of sarcasm and schmaltz that made my jaw drop when I first heard it back in the 1960s. It ended as it began, pianissimo, followed after the shortest of pauses (per the composer’s instructions in the score) by the fortissimo “all hell breaks loose” opening for the fourth movement.

This was powerful stuff, with the usual high standard of playing by members of the orchestra. Mahler’s sonic canvases may be massive, but they’re filled with marvelous details that allow soloists and ensembles to shine. Examples from last Saturday’s performance include Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, and Principal Bass Erik Harris in the third movement; the offstage trumpets in the eerie opening; and the eight (count ‘em, eight!) horns in the finale standing, and per Mahler’s instructions, playing loudly enough to drown out the trumpets (“Die Hörner Alles, auch die Trompeten ũbertönen”).

That’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby!

Symphony Preview: Big D

"The Germans," observed the great violinist Joseph Joachim, "have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising, is Beethoven's." This weekend (Saturday and Sunday, January 24 and 26) James Ehnes joins the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Stéphane Denève for the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) along with another uncompromising essay in D major, the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911).

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

The following comments are adapted from my own writing on both works over the last fifteen years.

Like many of the great 19th century composers, Beethoven wrote only one concerto for the violin, but it’s prime stuff. He was, unfortunately, so tardy in completing it that the soloist at the work's 1806 premiere, Franz Clement (for whom Beethoven had written the piece) had no time to rehearse and might have even been obliged sight read the thorny solo part.

The premiere took place on December 23, 1806, at the Theater an der Wien as part of what Brockway and Weinstock (in the 1967 edition of  "Men of Music") call, with classic understatement, "a singular program":

[The concerto's] first movement was a feature of the opening half of the entertainment, and the second and third movement were given during the second half. Intervening was, among other compositions, a sonata by Franz Clement, played on one string of a violin held upside down.

"Beethoven Letronne" by Blasius Höfel
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Common

Needless to say, this sort of cheesy showbiz was not the way the composer intended his work to be performed. Not surprisingly, it was poorly received and didn't begin to enter the standard repertoire until nearly two decades after Beethoven’s death. And that was likely because it was championed by Joachim, who first played it in 1844 (at the age of 12) at a concert in London with Felix Mendelssohn at the podium. Joachim also wrote cadenzas for the work that are still frequently performed.

Now the concerto is recognized as a masterful blend of solo showpiece and symphonic statement, with a substantial first movement that accounts for over half of the concerto's 45-minute running time, a mostly serene second, and a cheerfully flashy third.

There is, interestingly, a rarely heard alternate version of the Violin Concerto. As Michael Rodman writes at Allmusic.com, Beethoven later made a transcription of the concerto for piano and orchestra. He added a long cadenza for the soloist that included the tympani and published it as Op. 61a

The revised concerto was first performed in Vienna in 1807, but despite the occasional high-profile recording like the one Peter Serkin did with Seiji Ozawa and the New Philharmonia in the late 1960s, it remains, as the reviewer of that release notes at Classics Today, "a curio."

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, first performed in 1889, closes the program in spectacular fashion. Clocking in at just under an hour, the First is probably the most economical of Mahler’s symphonies. It’s also, to paraphrase Anna Russell, a kind of Mahler vitamin pill, combining all the composer’s characteristic gestures in one compact work.

Mahler circa 1889
By E. Bieber - Kohut, Adolph (1900)
Public Domain

It’s all here: the vivid invocation of the natural world, the heaven-storming despair, the macabre humor, the jocular impressions of village bands and sounds that would later be labeled “klezmer,” and  a wildly triumphant finale with a full complement of brass—including an expanded horn section—standing and gloriously blazing away. The subtitle “Titan” that’s often applied to this work may have originally referred to a novel of the same title by Jean-Paul Richter, but I think it’s simply an apt description of this music. Its impact is Titanic in every sense of the word.

As music depicting a journey from darkness to the light, the Mahler First feels very welcome at a time when geopolitical darkness seems to be closing in on us. Its hushed, expectant opening, its birdcalls, and what Chicago Symphony Orchestra program annotator Phillip Huscher calls "the gentle hum of the universe, tuned to A-natural and scattered over seven octaves"—all these things bring to mind a world emerging from darkness into light.

Speaking of that opening sequence: if it sounds familiar that’s because it's remarkably close to the little sequence that underscores the words "Space: the final frontier" in the theme of the classic TV show Star Trek. If you doubt me, take a few minutes to view CBC Radio 2 host Tom Allen's tongue-in-cheek video documentary on the lineage of that theme; it's fascinating stuff. 

And since both ST:TOS and Mahler’s First are fundamentally optimistic, that seems only right.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist James Ehnes in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 25 and 26, at the Stifel Theatre downtown.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: The big chill

A chilly wind blows through St. Louis this weekend as temperatures drop back to something more closely approximating the norm for late April. By sheer coincidence the musical equivalent of a brisk northern breeze blows through the Touhill Center, as well, as frequent guest John Stogårds steps up to the podium of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to conduct concerts dominated by his fellow Finn Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) and Danish composer Per Nørgård (b. 1932).

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Sibelius in 1913
By Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) 
Public Domain, 

It may be a bit of a cliché, but for me the music of Sibelius conjures up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds. You can hear that in the Sibelius works that open and close the program which are, respectively, “Rakastava (The Lover)” and the Symphony No. 7.  That same feeling is present in the work that precedes the Sibelius Seventh, Nørgård’s 2007 composition “Lysning (Glade)” for strings and percussion, albeit with a more contemporary harmonic palette.

Sibelius was notoriously self-critical, often revising works and even destroying those he deemed inferior. His Symphony No. 8, for example, was never completed and was eventually burned by the composer. “Rakastava” didn’t suffer that dire fate, but the original four-movement 1894 version, for unaccompanied male chorus, was never published. The composer produced a version for men's chorus and string orchestra in that same year, and for mixed choir in 1898, but none of them really caught on.

Finally, in 1912, he recycled “Rakastava” into a three-movement work for strings and percussion (tympani and triangle) and this time it was a hit. The work “captivated audiences” and is now “regarded as a minor masterpiece.” But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the recording by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist and I think you’ll agree. The romantic yearning of the first movement (“The Lover”) has an unsettled feel that’s accentuated by the occasional interruptions for the melodic flow by an agitated motif in the lower strings and tympani. The brief second movement (“The Path of the Beloved”) is an ethereal scherzo reminiscent of Mendelssohn. And the sense of melancholy in the final movement (“Good Night!... Farewell!”) becomes tragic about halfway through before setting into quiet resignation.

It’s emotionally complex music with just an occasional frisson of the cold north wind.

Per Nørgård
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Nørgård’s “Glade,” which opens the second half of the evening, feels a bit bleak, as well, but not consistently. There is, rather, a mix of light and shade of the sort you might encounter in a forest clearing. “There is a balance between the number of darker and lighter sections,” writes the composer, “as each ‘light’ section presents the same material as the ‘dark’ section before it—but heard from different instrumental colorings and nuances.” The unresolved feeling of the final moments of the work makes it a perfect companion for the Sibelius Symphony No. 7 that follows it and concludes the concert.

Sibelius completed his seventh and final symphony in 1924 after considerable labor and revisions. This brief (around 22 minutes) one-movement work is, as conductor Joshua Weilerstein writes, “a piece that is barely a symphony at all, and yet carries symphonic logic throughout.” Indeed, at its premiere (with Sibelius conducting) it was billed as “Fantasia Sinfonica” (“Symphonic Fantasy”) No. 1. It wasn’t until a year later that the composer decided that it was, in fact, an actual symphony—and one of which he was proud. “A great success,” he wrote after the first performance. “There is no denying it: my new work is one of the best. Tone and ‘colour’ both powerful.”

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled in analyses of the Sibelius Seventh over the past century, with much argument about what its actual form might be, what it really means, and other questions that are such great fodder for academic papers and blog posts. Weilerstein’s “Sticky Notes” episode on the work has the advantage of being clear and filled with musical illustrations. I recommend it.

Issues of structure and other musical nuts and bolts aside, though, the ultimate question for the listener is: what does it sound like and how does it feel? To me it sounds and feels mercurial, constantly shifting emotions, defying expectations, and ultimately ambiguous. Now it’s lamenting, now it’s breaking into a little folk dance, now it’s triumphant, and now it’s…over. And it’s not all that clear what actually happened.

Sir Simon Rattle, who conducts the performance in the SLSO playlist, says the Symphony No. 7 ends with an existential scream while Weilerstein says “it is a cosmic ending, almost like the launch of the note C into outer space.” I say it just…stops. And leaves us to decide what happens after that. Grey skies and whistling winds will probably figure into it somehow.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

That said, the concert won’t be all stormy weather. The first half concludes with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1771–1827), a work with a sunny outlook and strong echoes of Mozart, and especially in the finale, Haydn. Written before but published after the Concerto No. 1, it marks the beginning of Beethoven's dual careers as pianist and composer of concerti for his instrument of choice.

Outside of that finale, Haydn is mostly hiding in this work, though. It's ultimately all Beethoven. That's particularly obvious in the dramatic cadenza, written around 14 years after the concerto.

The last time the SLSO performed the Second Concerto, the ebullient Nicholas McGegan with conducted with South Korean (b. 1994) virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho at the keyboard. This time the soloist will be the remarkable Marie-Ange Nguci (b. 1998), whose biography is impressive, to say the least.

Clearly a prodigy, the Franco-Albanian pianist was only 13 when she won her first competition, the 2011 Lagny-sur-Marne International Piano Competition. That same year she was accepted into Nicholas Angelich’s class at the Paris Conservatoire. Today, she holds degrees in Musicology, Musical Analysis, and Music Pedagogy (Paris Sorbonne, Paris Conservatoire), an MBA in Cultural Management, and a performance diploma in ondes martenot (essentially a Theremin with a keyboard; Messiaen famously used it in his 1949 “Turangalîla-Symphonie”).

Oh, yeah: she’s also studying conducting at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.

“En Miror” (“In the mirror”), her 2017 debut album on the Mirare label, consists of piano music by composers known for their skills as organists and improvisers: César Franck, J.S. Bach, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Thierry Escaich. And her busy concert schedule includes appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Macao Symphony Orchestra. It’s impressive, one must admit.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts the orchestra and soloist Marie-Ange Nguci in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The concert also includes the Symphony No. 7 and “Rakastava (The Lover)” by Sibelius along with “Lysning (Glade)” by contemporary Danish composer Per Nørgård. Performances take place Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, April 19 through 21, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. The Saturday evening concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

Symphony Preview: Distant drums

In Act I, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing,” Leonato, the Governor of Messina, plays down his niece Beatrice’s insulting description of Benedick, saying that there is “a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

You can hear that wit in the opening measures of the work that opens the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this Friday and Saturday (March 22 and 23) as Music Director Stéphane Denève leads the band in a performance of the overture to Hector Berlioz's 1862 operatic treatment of “Much Ado About Nothing,” "Béatrice et Bénedict.” The short, playful opening theme immediately calls to mind the thrust and parry of the verbal duel that invariably begins when Beatrice and Benedick meet.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

Berlioz wrote the libretto himself (even though he neither spoke nor read English all that well), considerably condensing the original "battle of the sexes" comedy in the process. Huge swathes of plot were axed, along with great comic characters like Constable Dogberry to create what the composer called “a caprice written with a point of a needle.” Written just after the monumental “Les Troyens,” the opera had great success at its Baden-Baden premiere as well as in Weimar a few months later. There was no French performance until 1890, though, and "Béatrice et Bénedict.” has never really made it into the standard repertoire.

The overture has fared better in concert halls. It gets high marks for the skill with which Berlioz uses themes from his score to create a kind of vitamin pill version of the opera, with all the comedic and dramatic ingredients combined into a single eight-minute tone poem. “Though drawn from no less than six different arias or ensembles,” writes Michel Austin at The Hector Berlioz website, “the music is seamlessly fused by Berlioz into a coherent symphonic whole, much as Weber had done in his overtures to Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon."

Julia Wolfe
Photo: Peter Serling

Up next is the local premiere of “Pretty” by contemporary American composer Julia Wolfe (b. 1958). A co-commission by the SLSO, Berlin Philharmonic (where the world premiere took place last June), Houston Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the work’s title is frankly ironic. One might even say that it’s at war with the actual music which, based on the brief excerpts I’ve heard at the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, is a high-energy jamboree that’s anything but “pretty” in the conventional sense.

“The word ‘pretty’ has had a complicated relationship to women,” writes the composer on her website.  “It implies an attractiveness without any rough edges, without strength or power…My Pretty is a raucous celebration – embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll.”

War pops up once again as the backdrop for the work that concludes this weekend's concerts, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73 (“Emperor”). Indeed, the concerto was composed under the cloud of war and occupation.

When Beethoven was writing the concerto in 1809, Vienna was not so much the fabled “City of Dreams” as a metropolis of nightmares. The French laid siege to it with shelling so fierce that at one point the composer took refuge in his brother's house and covered his head with pillows to escape the din. The royal family—including Beethoven's friend and patron Archduke Rudolf—fled, along with many of the notable families with whom the composer had become close.

Left alone and, once the French occupation began, in difficult financial circumstances due to rapid inflation, Beethoven had little else to do but compose. The fifth concerto is probably the most famous work to emerge from this difficult period, although the Op. 81a piano sonata (“Les Adieux”) is probably a close second. Both were dedicated to Rudolph.

Beethoven
As if you didn't know.

Much has been written about the Concerto No. 5 and, in fact, the program notes this week (based on earlier notes by Paul Schiavo and Yvonne Frindle) provide quite a good map of the composer’s stunning musical landscape. The magisterial first movement, the wistful second, and the jolly concluding rondo all show Beethoven at his best.

The soloist this weekend is Tom Borrow (b. 2000), a 2024 Artist-In-Residence with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and winner of the Terence Judd-Hallé Orchestra Award 2023. His big professional break came in 2019, when he was called in at the last minute (the last 36 hours, to be precise) to replace Khatia Buniatishvili in a series of twelve concerts with the Israel Philharmonic. "Tom Borrow is already a star,” wrote Yossi Schiffman of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, “and we will all surely hear more about him."

I was unable to locate anything by Borrow on Spotify but he does appear in several videos on YouTube, including the second and third movements of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major from that legendary 2019 concert.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist Tom Borrow in the Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) by Beethoven, along with the overture to "Béatrice et Bénedict” by Berlioz and the local premiere of “Pretty” by Julia Wolfe. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time afterward at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: String theories

The string section is the backbone of the symphony orchestra, but even so, it’s rare to see them dominate a program the way they will when David Danzmayr conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm this Friday (December 1, 2023). The wind and percussion sections don’t show up until after intermission, and even then, there are only a “baker’s dozen” of them. Sounds that are plucked and bowed will be more common than those that are struck and (ahem) blowed.

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Jessie Montgomery
Photo by Jiyang Chen

The concerts open with "Strum” by Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981), a violinist and composer whose colorful "Starburst" was the first piece to be played on the stage at Powell when it reopened on a limited basis on October 15th, 2020, after a seven-month shutdown due to the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic. The composer says the title refers to "an upward and downward (back and forth) pizzicato stroke" for the strings that mimics the sound of a strummed guitar. "Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement," she writes, "the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration."

It achieves that by employing a wide variety of techniques as the string players pluck, strum, and bow in ways that call to mind everything from Appalachian folk tunes to guitar rock. You can hear that right from the start in the Catalyst Quartet's recording in this week's Spotify playlist, with Ms. Montgomery herself on second violin. Given her participation, we can probably regard that as the definitive performance. It certainly rocks and sings with virtuosity and spirit.

First performed by members of the SLSO in its string quartet version in the fall of 2020, “Strum” will be heard this weekend in an arrangement for full string orchestra that had its first performance on October 14, 2023, by Sinfonia Rotterdam. This will be the local debut of this latest version.

Up next is the Concerto in A minor for Oboe and Strings, written in 1943–44 by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). As the date indicates, this was a work written under the shadow of World War II, and in fact, its world premiere had to be postponed for over three months and moved from London to Liverpool because of the Luftwaffe’s bombardment of the British capital with the infamous V-1 flying bomb.

You’d never know that from the mix of moods that characterizes much of the concerto, though. The opening “Rondo pastorale” has a kind of thoughtful nostalgia and a pentatonic melody that evokes images of “England's green and pleasant land,” while the “Minuet and Musette” second movement continues in a bucolic vein with (as the title suggests) a mix of the court and country dances.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

The concluding “Scherzo” expands the emotional scope of the work significantly. It opens in a jaunty enough mood, but soon moves on to moments of longing and even anxiety before returning to the calmer world of the opening movement. It all concludes with a rapid mini cadenza ending on a sustained pianissimo high D that, “continues to strike fear into oboists.” Given that this Friday’s soloist is SLSO Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks, however, I don’t expect that to be an issue.

The concerts conclude with the Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 36, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Written in 1802, the year in which the composer’s deafness was becoming apparent and in which he composed the famous “Heiligenstadt Testament”—a letter intended for (but never sent to) his brothers documenting his despair and hinting at suicide—the symphony shows not a trace of the anguish that plagued its creator. “In this Symphony,” wrote Hector Berlioz, “everything is noble, energetic, proud.” It’s as though the composer sought release from his dark mood in unstintingly sunny music.

Ironically, that unbridled cheerfulness rankled some stuffy critics at the work’s premiere at the Theater an der Wien on April 5th 1803. The French journal Tablettes de Polymnie grumbled about its “barbaric chords” that suggested “doves and crocodiles…locked up together.” The Vienna Zeitung für die elegante Welt declared it “a hideously wounded, writhing dragon that refuses to die.” Listening to the work now, one wonders what was up with those guys. A bad Schnitzel at the local Gaststätte maybe? In any case, audiences have found the Second Symphony pretty irresistible over the centuries. I expect you will as well.

The Essentials: David Danzmayr conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and oboe soloist Jelena Dirks in a program of Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum”, the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 on Friday, December 1, at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm. The performances take place at the Touhill Center on the University of Missouri—St. Louis campus. The Friday evening concert will be broadcast on Saturday, December 2, at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: Some of my favorite things

This Friday and Sunday, November 3 and 5, Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Paul Lewis in a program that I pretty much guarantee will include at least one of your favorites. It certainly includes my favorite of the five piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

"Beethoven Letronne" by Blasius Höfel
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Common

The concerto in question is Beethoven's Fourth in G major, Op. 58, composed in 1806 and first performed in March 1807 at a private concert at the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The public got its first exposure to it at an infamous four-hour concert on December 22nd of the following year at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, with the composer as both soloist and conductor.

That concert was such an unpleasant, ill-prepared disaster that it was not until Mendelssohn revived the work in 1836 that it began to catch on with the public, which has loved it ever since.

The Fourth is my favorite in part because it's so concise. I don't think there's a spare note in the entire work, and everything is perfectly proportioned. It's also remarkably innovative for its time in that it begins with a short declaration by the solo piano which is then taken up by the orchestra. Normal procedure would have been to have the orchestra state all the major themes before the piano made its first entrance. Instead, the movement seems to grow out of a dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra.

The second movement is a dialogue between the soloist and the band as well, but this time it's in the form of a call and response, in which dramatic pronouncements by the orchestra are met, at least initially, with more subdued and lyrical material by the soloist.

This unusual structure has given birth to a notion (first advanced by Beethoven's biographer Adolph Bernhard Marx in 1859) that the movement was inspired by the story of Orpheus’s descent into Hades. When I first heard this movement, though, it conjured up the image of an argument (or maybe a debate), with the aggressive stance of the orchestra met, at first, with attempts at calm reason, then with agitation, and finally with a kind of resignation. It's as if, after trying in vain to calm and placate its orchestral partner, the piano finally sighs and say, "OK, OK, you win. Let's just drop it."

Gluck in 1775
by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Public Domain

It is, in any event, hard to say what Beethoven actually had in mind. The bottom line is that when the movement comes to its tragic conclusion, I have always felt a need to exhale slowly and then bask in the relief of the jolly, Haydnesque Rondo finale.

“In the 4th piano concerto,” said Joshua Weilerstein on his “Sticky Notes” podcast this past June, “Beethoven turns his entire musical brand so to speak upside down. Instead of a blazing fire, we get a gentle warmth, instead of drama, we get tenderness. And instead of virtuosity, we get a practically transcendental level of simplicity.”

Speaking of Orpheus in the underworld, the work immediately preceding the Beethoven concerto is the popular “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Act II Scene 2 of the opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” (1762) by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)—a pairing that surely isn’t coincidental. In the opera it accompanies a ballet that introduces a scene set in Elysium. The work’s prominent role for the flute has made it a favorite among folks like James Galway (whose recording is on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist), while the serene mood it creates has earned it a place on albums and playlists emphasizing music for relaxation.

Maurice Ravel in 1925
en.wikipedia.org

After intermission it’s back to the Baroque as re-imagined by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Written between 1914 and 1917, “Le Tombeau de Couperin” began life as a six-movement solo piano work that invokes the style and form of the 17th century French keyboard suites epitomized by François Couperin (1668–1733). Each of the movements was dedicated to a friend of Ravel’s who died in World War I. That lends a dual meaning to the work’s title since “tombeau” literally translates as “tomb” but musically it means “tribute to” or “in memory of.”

That sounds like it ought to be music for lamentation. Instead it’s a bubbly, graceful, and altogether charming work, especially in the 1919 four-movement version for full orchestra that will be on the program this weekend. James M. Keller describes Ravel’s orchestration as “crystalline”—the perfect adjective as far as I’m concerned.

“Crystalline” would not be a bad description of the sound of the final work on the program, the Symphony No. 1 (“Classical), Op. 25, by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). It’s not a word one would use to label most of the composer’s output, and thereby hangs a tale.

Prokofiev’s "Classical" symphony came about in part as a reaction by the composer to his growing reputation as an aggressive modernist—said reputation springing from his spiky Piano Concerto No. 2 and his electrifying "Scythian Suite." He also felt that he was becoming too dependent on the piano as a compositional medium. So in 1917, with the socialist revolution exploding around him, he retreated, sans piano, to a village outside of St. Petersburg and completed the symphony he had begun the previous year.

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
Photo by Bain News Service

“When our classically inclined musicians and professors (to my mind faux-classical) hear this symphony, they will be bound to scream in protest at this new example of Prokofiev’s insolence,” wrote the composer in his diary. “But my true friends will see that the style of my symphony is precisely Mozartian classicism and will value it accordingly, while the public will no doubt just be content to hear happy and uncomplicated music which it will, of course, applaud.”

Audiences have been applauding ever since.  The symphony does, indeed, take the Classical style and give it a distinctly 20th-century sound. It will also give our orchestra's string section something of a workout as it demands a lot from them, with rapid passages in the first movement and a high soft entry in the second, and generally requires players that can handle the lightness and transparency of the orchestration.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Paul Lewis in a program consisting of Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from “Orfeo ed Euridice,” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (“Classical”). Performances take place at the Touhill Center on Friday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, October November 3 and 5.  The Friday performance will be broadcast Saturday evening, November 4, at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: On second thoughts

Written By Chuck Lavazzi

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

With Powell Symphony Hall closed for the next two years for extensive renovation and expansion, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is presenting its new season in two different venues: the 3100 seat Stifel Theatre (where the season opener was held) and the more intimate 1600 seat Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall at the Touhill Center on the UMSL campus.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

This coming weekend (September 29 and 30), Stéphane Denève and the band make their first season appearance at the Touhill. In keeping with the smaller stage, it’s a program that demands smaller orchestral forces than the two Richard Strauss Big Band Extravaganzas last weekend.

The concert opens with the overture Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) wrote for the 1804 play “Coriolan” by the composer’s friend Heinrich von Collin. Like Shakespeare’s more familiar “Coriolanus,” it’s based on the story of the Roman general Caius Marcius Coriolanus, who led a rebellion against the decaying Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. Persuaded at the last to refrain from sacking Rome, he was treacherously killed by his allies.

Reflecting the arc of the play, Beethoven’s overture begins in heroic defiance and ends somber resignation. It’s not a curtain raiser so much as an independent tone poem which, as Brockway and Weinstock write in Men of Music, “crystalizes the essence of the drama as Beethoven felt it.” Although a popular piece, it hasn’t been performed by the SLSO since 2008 and never under Maestro Denève’s baton.

Hold your applause after the overture because the band will proceed directly (attacca) to the next item, “subito con forza” by contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961). The reason why the two works are linked will be apparent the moment you hear it, and I am disinclined to spoil that moment for you here. If you must have your spoilers, though, there’s an excellent performance by the Oslo Philharmonic under Klaus Mäkelä (complete with synchronized score) on YouTube. In any case, be prepared for Beethovenian “Easter eggs.”

Up next is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15. It's officially his Piano Concerto No. 1 because it was the first of his five concerti to be published, but it was actually his second essay in the form, dating from 1797—two years after the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. It is, as a result, more richly orchestrated, more sophisticated, and a bit less derivative of Mozart and Haydn than the B-flat major concerto. I think Haydn’s influence is most apparent in the allegro scherzando finale, both in the jollity of the music and in the fact that it’s a rondo—a favorite form of the composer. The noble opening theme of the first movement, though, strikes me as pure Beethoven.

The concerto was last heard here in January 2022, with Denève conducting and Shai Wasner at the piano. This time around the soloist will be the American pianist Jonathan Biss (b. 1980), whose recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas is a “must listen” for anyone seriously interested in the instrument to which the composer consigned his most profound thoughts. Biss is also a fine and exceptionally witty writer, as a stroll through his web site will reveal.

The program concludes with the Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 by Robert Schumann (1810–1856). The composer started the first movement in May of 1841 (only two months after the successful premiere of his Symphony No. 1) and, with time out for holidays and the birth of his daughter Marie, wrote the last note that October. Its four movements are played without pause “as if written in one continuous arc” (Judith Chernaik, Schumann: The Faces and the Masks) and share enough common thematic material so that, to cite the SLSOs program notes, it “approaches the novel cyclical construction proposed by pianist and composer Franz Liszt.”  Chernaik describes it as “wonderfully linked together, full of poetry, haunting in its melodies, sure in its handling of each section of the orchestra…it was another masterpiece, as Schumann must have known.”

Schumann in 1850
en.wikipedia.org

Audiences, alas, failed to appreciate any of this when the symphony was first performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the baton of concertmaster Ferdinand David on December 6th 1841. The response was unenthusiastic and largely the result of events beyond the composer’s control. Audiences heard the work only after the intermission of a long concert, the first half of which consisted of seven (!) works including Schumann’s “Overture, Scherzo and Finale,” Mendelssohn’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (with Clara Schumann as soloist), a series of works for piano solo (Clara) and duo (Clara and celebrity guest Franz Liszt), and Liszt’s setting for male chorus of the patriotic “Rhineland.”

Not surprisingly, the audience, the musicians, and the critics were a bit worn down by the time Schumann’s symphony was finally played. “They failed completely to appreciate the work’s originality and power,” writes Chernaik. The tepid response made it hard for the composer to find a publisher for the work and he shelved it until 1851 during his tenure as Music Director at Düsseldorf. “I totally reorchestrated the symphony,” he wrote in a letter to the Dutch composer Johannes Verhulst, “and, of course, made it better and more effective than it was before.” It was this revision, first conducted by Schumann himself in 1853, that enjoyed the success the 1841 original failed to achieve. It’s now the one that everyone performs, including the SLSO this weekend.

Ah, but is it in fact “more effective than it was before”? When Schumann’s friend Brahms prepared an edition of the composer’s collected works in 1886, he had on hand an autograph of the original version (courtesy of Clara). Upon comparing them, he decided that he preferred the original. Clara strongly disagreed and the original remained unpublished until 2003. Fortunately, John Axelrod and the Bucharest Symphony courageously issued a recording of both versions on the Orchid label just a few days ago. You can listen to both of them on my Spotify playlist and decide for yourself.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Jonathan Biss in a program consisting of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Piano Concerto No. 1 along with Unsuk Chin’s “subito con forza” and Schumann’s Symphony No. 4. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, September 29 and 30 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday evening performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3. For more information, visit the SLSO web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Review: Nicholas McGegan brings a pair of theatrical hits by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to Powell

As our little group approached Powell Hall Friday night (March 10th), a tour bus pulled up with what appeared to be a group of students who were there to take in a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert. If so, their chaperones made a good choice.

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.]

With early music guru Nicholas McGegan (who has a long association with the SLSO) at the podium, this fast-paced and entertaining pair of works for orchestra and chorus by Beethoven and Mendelssohn would certainly have made for an ideal introduction to classical music and the whole SLSO experience. At just over 90 minutes (including intermission), it was a bit shorter than the typical evening at the symphony (normal run time is around 2 hours or so) and the music was listener friendly. No experience was required, and a good time was had by all.

Sarah Price

The evening began with the Beethoven’s “Selections from Egmont,” op. 84, composed on commission for an 1810 revival of Goethe’s 1788 tragedy. The play is a fictionalized account of the execution of Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere (1522–1568), who was beheaded for resisting Spanish rule and the imposition of the Inquisition on the Netherlands. Running around a half-hour, Beethoven’s Op. 84 consists of a noble and emotionally charged overture along with two songs (for the fictional character of Clärchen, Egmont’s love interest), four entr’actes (scene change music), two bits of underscoring, and a final “Victory Symphony.” That last bit is essentially a repeat of the final 90 seconds of the overture and follows Egmont’s call for independence.

McGegan approached all this with that combination of unbridled joy and meticulous attention to detail which has characterized his work here in the past. The opening of the overture set the tone for the performance overall. Marked Sostenuto ma non troppo (“Sustained, but not too much,” literally), it was majestically slow—which made the gradual build to the main theme all the more commanding. The two-note “execution” violin motif just before the Allegro con brio coda was striking decisive and the coda itself was stirring, with nice accents by Ann Choomack on piccolo.

After a long pause for latecomers (who had, perhaps, not noticed that the concert started at 7:30 rather than 8) soprano Danielle Yilmaz gave a defiant performance of “Die Trommel gerühret” (“Beat the drums”), in which Clärchen declares her love and support for Egmont in militaristic terms. Clärchen’s other song, “Freudvoll und leidvoll” (“Full of joy, full of sorrow”), got an equally strong performance from soprano Sarah Price. She let us hear the emotional ambiguity of the lyrics, which move from waver between doubt (Andante con moto) and ecstasy (Allegro assai vivace) before finally settling on the latter.

Enrico Lagasca
Photo: Jiyang Chen

The entr’actes and underscore pieces were all neatly done, with some fine oboe solos by Jelena Dirks and excellent playing by the horns, especially in “Clärchen’s death.” The “Victory Symphony” brought it all to an electrifying finish.

The second half of the concert belonged to Mendelssohn’s 1843 revision of his setting for chorus and orchestra of Goethe’s 1799 dramatic poem “Die Erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”). In what was, surprisingly, the work’s first performance here, McGegan led the orchestra and chorus in a real barnburner of a performance. It was sung in English, as many of Mendelssohn’s choral works were even in his day. The multi-lingual composer knew he was a Hot Property in Britain and made sure his music would work just as well in English or German.

The story deals with a group of German Druids who prefer to celebrate Beltane eve in the old-fashioned way, without interference from Christian authorities. Their solution is to scare the Christian forces away by disguising themselves as assorted imps, devils, and demons. The opportunities for high drama here are obvious, and Mendelssohn made the most of them in a score filled with big, commanding choruses and an orchestra unusually rich in brass and percussion parts. “It’s very high energy music,” observed McGegan in an interview for my video blog. “Mendelssohn lives in the era before decaf.”

The sturm und drang gets off to a rousing start with the turbulent “Overture: bad weather.” The “dark and stormy night” tone painting is reminiscent of the “Hebrides” Overture—not exactly surprising, since it was written at around the same time—and McGegan’s reading was so vivid you could almost feel the wind and rain. His entire podium presence, in fact, was a wonderful mix of precise cueing and physical enthusiasm.

There are a few solo numbers in “The First Walpurgis Night,” but the chorus is the real star of the show. Under the direction of Webster University’s Trent Patterson, the SLSO singers displayed just the right mix of power and precision that’s called for here. Their enunciation was admirably crisp, although it wasn’t obvious just how good it was until I heard the Saturday night broadcast, since Powell Hall’s acoustics can muddy things a bit.

That said, the soloists were impressive as well. Tenor Thomas Cooley was a radiant Druid welcoming the spring as well as a comically petrified Christian soldier who decided “onward” is not his preferred direction. Bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca was an imposing Priest, although he was having a bit of trouble with his high notes on Friday (I suspect allergies might have been the issue). In any case, he sounded fine in Saturday night’s broadcast.

The SLSO Chorus
Photo: Dilip Vishwanat for the SLSO

For my money, though, the most impressive performance was that of alto Victoria Carmichael (of the SLSO Chorus) as “An aged woman of the people” warning of the violence that can be expected from the Christians if the Druids are discovered: “On their ramparts they will slaughter / Mother, father, son, and daughter!” That’s potent stuff that calls for exactly the kind of forceful delivery it got from Carmichael.

It was good to see and hear the chorus in action again, especially in music that gives them a chance to display their strength as an ensemble. And I have always found McGegan to be a welcome presence on the podium. His association with the SLSO goes back a long way—to a 1986 “Messiah” in fact—so his rapport with the band has, by now, a kind of cozy familiarity.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in a one-night-only preview of the program they will take on the orchestra's March European tour. The concert consists of Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Grieg's Piano Concerto, and Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances." The concert takes place on Thursday, March 16, at 7:30 pm. Stephanie Childress will conduct the SLSO Youth Orchestra and Concerto Competition winner Ayan Amerin in the Allegro non troppo from the Violin Concerto in D major by Brahms and the Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich on Sunday, March 19 at 3 pm. The regular concert season resumes in mid-April.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: All Goethe all the time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was, as the late Philip Weller notes in the Grove Dictionary of Music, “[O]ne of the most important literary and cultural figures of his age…recognized during his lifetime for his accomplishments of almost universal breadth.” This weekend (Friday and Saturday, March 10 and 11) Nicholas McGegan will conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and vocal soloists in a pair of big, dramatic works inspired by Goethe.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

Goethe age 38 by Angelica Kauffmann
commons.wikimedia.org

The works in question are the overture and incidental music Beethoven composed on commission for an 1810 revival of Goethe’s 1788 tragedy “Egmont” and Mendelssohn’s 1843 revision of his setting for chorus and orchestra of the 1799 dramatic poem “Die Erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”). The two works have much in common, including the fact that they both deal with the issues of political and religious freedom. Which makes them rather relevant right now.

The protagonist of Goethe’s play is the historical Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere (1522–1568), who was beheaded for resisting Spanish rule and the imposition of the Inquisition on the Netherlands. In Goethe’s fictionalized version of events, Egmont becomes a heroic defender of individual freedom who, before his execution, delivers a rousing speech demanding national independence.  

The story appealed tremendously to Beethoven, a dedicated republican (in the classical sense of “anti-monarchist”) who was chafing at the occupation of Vienna by the French in 1809. That appeal and Beethoven’s great admiration for Goethe combined to produce a noble and emotionally charged overture along with two songs (for the fictional character of Klärchen, Egmont’s love interest), four entr’actes (scene change music), two bits of underscoring, and a final “Victory Symphony.” That last bit is essentially a repeat of the final 90 seconds of the overture and follows Egmont’s call for independence.

In an interview on my YouTube channel, McGegan described the entire score as “top-rate Beethoven…right up there in the vintage period of middle Beethoven.” Chronologically it falls between the Sixth (“Pastoral”) Symphony and the exuberant Seventh, which the authors of the Grove entry on Beethoven describe as time of “ever-increasing technical virtuosity.” Certainly the combination of high drama, lyricism, and tragedy in these ten short movements is immensely appealing even if you’re not familiar with the play. Which, of course, most of us are not.

Goethe loved the music but was less impressed by Beethoven himself when they finally met in the summer of 1812 at Teplitz. McGegan notes that he found the composer “a little bit feral,” while Beethoven, for his part, found the elegant writer “too much of a toady…too courtly for his taste.” It’s a reminder, I suppose, that it’s not always wise to meet one’s heroes in person.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

After intermission the full chorus joins the band for the local premiere of the English language version of “The First Walpurgis Night." Once again the issue is freedom in general and freedom from religious persecution in particular.

But first a bit of history. “Walpurgis Night” refers to the evening of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, a British healer who (to quote McGegan) “ended up in Germany as a sort of missionary to the Goths and all those tribes who wore horns on their heads.” After her canonization her name was tacked on to the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, traditionally celebrated on May 1st. It’s one of the old cross-quarter days, so called because they fall between the equinoxes and solstices. Beltane comes between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice.

The business of rebranding the old pagan holidays was common as the early Church went about the business of “Christianizing” the heathens. As marketing decisions go it was pretty smart. It’s much easier to convert folks if you don’t mess with their holidays. As the Encyclopedia Britannica relates:

Walburga [sic] is traditionally associated with May 1 because of a medieval account of her being canonized upon the translation of her remains from their place of burial to a church circa 870. Although it is likely that the date of her canonization is purely coincidental to the date of the pagan celebrations of spring, people were able to celebrate both events under church law without fear of reprisal.

“The First Walpurgis Night” deals with a group of German Druids who prefer to celebrate Beltane eve in the old-fashioned way, without interference from Christian authorities. Their solution is to scare the Christian forces away by disguising themselves as assorted imps, devils, and demons. “Help, my comrades,” sings a Christian guard (naturally, he’s a tenor), “see a legion / Yonder comes from Satan’s region!” Thrown into panic by the combination of the Druid’s costumes and their own imaginations, the would-be persecutors take it on the lam, leaving the Druids free to celebrate spring in their own way, thanks very much.

All this unfurls in nine scenes plus an overture that sets the scene. There are parts for solo alto, tenor, and bass-baritone, but for the most part the story of “The First Walpurgis Night” is told by the chorus. “It’s a really good sing for the choir,” observes McGegan. “It’s very high energy music…Mendelssohn lives in the era before decaf.” It’s also quite an entertaining and highly theatrical work, so it will be good to hear it sung in English.  Projected translations are great, but they can create a slight distance between the music and the audience.

Portrait of Mendelssohn by
James Warren Childe, 1839
en.wikipedia.org

About the English translation: it's not clear whether the chorus will be singing the one the multilingual Mendelssohn had prepared when he composed the work or the one William Bartholomew did in 1899. Either way, it will make the work that much more accessible.

The guest choral conductor this weekend is Trent Patterson, Director of Choral Studies and Music Education at the Webster University Department of Music.  Patterson is also the choral director at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves, where four Webster music students serve as Scholar Singers in the Emmanuel Choir.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven’s overture and incidental music to “Egmont” and Mendelssohn’s “The First Walpurgis Night.” Soloists in the Beethoven are sopranos Sarah Price and Danielle Yilmaz. For the Mendelssohn the solo singers are alto Victoria Carmichael, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca. Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, March 10 and 11 at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: Heroics and starbursts

This weekend (Thursday through Sunday, October 15-18), Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) return to Powell Hall for the first time since the SARS-Cov-19 pandemic broke in March. For the audience, the experience will, as I noted in an earlier article, be a radical change from what used to be considered "normal." One of the two works on the abbreviated program, though, will be familiar.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

That work is the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, known as the "Eroica." First performed on April 7, 1805, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, the work was a radical departure from Beethoven's earlier compositions. Ironically for such a striking and ultimately triumphant work, that departure had its origins in a "dark night of the soul" brought on the composer's increasing deafness and tinnitus. I caused Beethoven to engage in a re-evaluation of his life, described in an 1802 document now known as the "Heiligenstadt Testament."

The "Testament," as most classical fans will recall, was a letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann at the town of Heiligenstadt (now part of Vienna) in which he told of his despair over his hearing loss and his struggles with thoughts of suicide. The letter was never delivered (it was found among his papers after his death in 1827) and seems, in retrospect, to have acted as a kind of catharsis for the composer. Before the "Testament" he was a composer/pianist. Afterwards, he would be exclusively a composer.

But not just any early 19th-century composer. He would be Beethoven. Specifically, he would be the Beethoven we now often think of, in somewhat hyperbolic terms, as a heaven-storming, tormented genius. He would be the spark that ignited the Romantic movement in music. It's an attitude towards music that waned in the early 20th century in the face of dogged attacks by serialists and others who seemed to regard music as more of a mathematical exercise than an effort in communication, but it never really died. Indeed, the first work on this weekend's program sounds unquestionably Romantic to my ears.

But I digress.

The important point is that the Symphony No. 3 marked the beginning of the emergence of Beethoven's unique compositional voice. His first two symphonies were clearly in the mold of Haydn and Mozart. But with the "Eroica," as Paul Munro writes in his program notes, "his music decisively shifted to a bold, strange new direction."

You can hear that boldness in the first two big E-flat major chords. They're almost like a pair of gauntlets thrown down to challenge established notions of what a symphony should be, and they set the pattern for not only the first movement, but for the rest of the symphony as well. Indeed as Christopher H. Gibbs writes in an essay for NPR, "[t]he motivic, metric, and harmonic surprises continue throughout this movement of such extraordinary length, unprecedented for its time."

The bold drama continues with the heroic funeral march of the second movement, the restless energy of the third movement scherzo, and the towering finale-a set of elaborate variations followed by a powerful coda. It clocks in at around fifty minutes, which no doubt seemed absurdly excessive to audiences accustomed to symphonies half that length. "One early critic," writes Welsh musicologist David Wyn Morris, "described it as 'a very long-drawn-out daring and wild fantasia' which, at least, reveals a response to its emotive power."

The finale is also a classic example of musical recycling. The theme that serves as the basis for the variations was originally part of a set of twelve "Contredanses" Beethoven wrote between 1791 and 1802. It seems to have been a favorite of his, popping up again in (among other places) his score for the 1802 ballet "The Creatures of Prometheus." Composer and writer Derek Strahan has suggested that Beethoven saw it as a "hero" theme. It certainly becomes heroic in the course of the final movement of the "Eroica."

Violinist and composer
Jessie Montgomery

One aspect of this weekend's "Eroica" that will sound different to many listeners, by the way, will be the size of the orchestra. Physical distancing requirements limit the number of musicians that can be on the stage at any one time, so this "Eroica" will be performed by an ensemble of 40. Modern orchestras typically are much larger, but as Maestro Denève point out in this week's program notes, "when the ‘Eroica’ was premiered, it was in a very small hall, with a very small orchestra." So this is a chance to hear the work is much the way the composer's contemporaries would have heard it.

The concerts will open with a piece that, although composed back in 2012, will probably be unfamiliar to most of you since this is its first local performance. It's "Starburst" by contemporary violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery. Originally composed for a nine-piece string ensemble (and first performed in the format by the Sphinx Virtuosi in Miami in 2012), it was later expanded by Jannina Norpoth into the chamber orchestra version we'll hear this week.

The composer describes "Starburst" as "a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors. Exploding gestures are juxtaposed with gentle fleeting melodies in an attempt to create a multidimensional soundscape." Now that I've had the chance to listen to it a few times, I'd describe it as a sparkling and thoroughly delightful sonic explosion that calls to mind musical depictions of fireworks by composers like Stravinsky and Debussy while still speaking in a sonic voice that is entirely Ms. Montgomery's own. It's "program music" in the best Romantic tradition and great fun. I look forward to hearing what the SLSO players do with it this week.

If you want to sample it yourself in advance, there's a recording of it by the chamber ensemble The Knights on YouTube that's hard to beat. The recording was produced entirely on line last month (September 20th) and includes a lively and informative post-performance chat with the composer and Knights violinist Christina Courtin, who is also a co-producer of the video.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the first of two special chamber orchestra concerts this Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Friday at 11 am, and Sunday at 3 pm, October 15-18. The program, which will run about an hour with no intermission, consists of Jessie Montgomery's "Starburst" and Beethoven's Symphony No 3 ("Eroica"). Audience size will be limited to 100 for each performance and tickets can only be purchased by calling the SLSO box office at 314-534-1700. Only two tickets can be purchased per household.